Leading 4-0 against Edina Gallovits-Hall in the first round of the Australian Open, Serena Williams fell while chasing a ball and twisted her right ankle. Her already heavily taped ankle was treated and re-taped multiple times from then on, but the outcome of the match does not suggest Williams was in any disadvantage as she scored a 6-0 6-0 victory. Actually, in the second set her opponent won just six points.

After the match, the 31-year-old ensured us that, despite the pain and swelling, nothing can stop her from pushing herself to win her third straight Grand Slam title:

I mean, unless something fatal happens to me, there's no way I'm not going to be competing. I'm alive. My heart's beating. I'll be fine.

Women's Tennis Blog's friend John Bolan recently had a telephone talk with his friend Lois Goodman, the tennis referee who had been accused of murdering her husband, but now the case has been dropped and she's been allowed to resume judging matches in 2013. John wanted to share a few words about his friendship with Lolo and some of Lolo's thoughts from their telephone conversation.

Lois (Lolo) Goodman was accused of murdering her husband of fifty years and arrested in her official uniform while working at the 2012 US Open. She was out of her Los Angeles home she shared with her husband when it seems he had an accident or heart attack on the stairs. When she came home, he was lying on his bed already dead. The police investigated and acknowledged that he died from an accident. Days later, while Lolo was in New York to officiate for the US Open, the authorities arrested her for his murder. She was publicly arrested in her tennis uniform, a picture of which was in all the national news. She was flown back to LA and thrown in prison.

Later, her attorneys won her release. She had to put up bail money and was not permitted to leave her home. She had to wear a monitoring devise around her ankle. Then, she proved she was not having an affair, passed a lie detector test and had an expert witness state her husband probably died because he had a heart attack on the stairs and fell and hit his head on the coffee cup he was carrying. The prosecution finally admitted they had no case and released her. After her release, Lolo was invited to appear on the morning TV shows and was also interviewed by Anderson Cooper.

I met Lolo 10 years ago at the WTA tournament in La Costa, California. Our friends knew her well and introduced me when she came and sat with us after her matches were completed. We would have parties each year for her and the other tennis officials. We would also talk to her at other tennis tournaments and take her to dinner in New York City after tennis at the Open. She is my favorite tennis official. Read more »

In June last year, Maria Sharapova said that she was not on Twitter because her daily routine was not worth sharing and she couldn't imagine what her life would look like if she added tweeting to her daily activities on top of her compulsive texting.

I mean, I'm bored with myself on a daily basis, and I think if I'm bored, like eating a bowl of pasta, I don't need to let the world know that I'm at this restaurant eating a bowl of pasta.

Half a year later and the tennis super star couldn't resist the fad. Just two hours after posting her first tweet, Sharapova already had over 20,000 followers. Read more »

With back-to-back titles in Auckland and Sydney, Agnieszka Radwanska came to the Australian Open as the most prominent player of the season and the Pole started the sunny Grand Slam with a 7-5 6-0 victory over local wildcard world No.307 Bojana Bobusic, thus extending her 2013 streak to 10 matches. The fourth-seeded Radwanska, who has made three quarterfinals at Melbourne Park, dropped serve three times in the first set and saw her opponent serving for the first set at 5-4, before finding her range and benefiting from Bobusic's 41 unforced errors. Next for Radwanska is Irina-Camelia Begu.

You know that you're the whole package in the WTA world when you accompany your great success at tennis tournaments with big sponsorships and fancy photoshoots. The 23-year-old Radwanska now has that kind of lifestyle.  Read more »

Maria Sharapova's marketability ensured that her luxury brand of sweets Sugarpova, launched in August 2012 in New York, is about to see a %120 return on investment and is now spreading internationally, in particular, ahead of the Australian Open, the Russian organized an official Melbourne Sugarpova launch. But health concerns raised over the sugary product may spoil Sharapova's image.

The average bag of Sugarpova candy has 84 grams of sugar, equivalent to two cans of Coca Cola, and child psychologist Dr Justin Coulson labeled the tennis star's nudging people towards an "unhealthy habit" as "simply irresponsible", especially given the amount of influence she has. Read more »